


bad weather

by monarchs



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alcohol, Confrontations, Drunkenness, M/M, Post-Canon, Thunderstorms, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29424282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monarchs/pseuds/monarchs
Summary: Years later, Mark runs into Eduardo at the lobby of a five-star hotel.Eduardo’s wasted, Mark’s sober.
Relationships: Eduardo Saverin/Mark Zuckerberg
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26
Collections: The Prompt Network





	bad weather

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill for Round 1 of [The Prompt Net](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/thepromptnetwork/profile). The prompts were "Drunk" and "Thunder".
> 
> Thank you to @queuebird for the beta!!!
> 
> Fluff? I promised no such thing.

Mark sees him across the lobby. 

It’s like seeing a ghost. 

His mind starts calculating the years, unearthing the settlement, the double depositions, the night with an algorithm marked on his window. 

Eduardo doesn’t see him. Not at first, anyways.

He’s inebriated, Mark realizes. And wet, because it’s been raining outside for three days straight. Two men in business suits are holding Eduardo up, struggling because he’s so tall and lanky. A tangle of limbs, a storm of emotions. They whisper things Mark doesn’t understand. And then Eduardo sees him.

It’s like looking straight at a sunset.

“Michael! What a pleasant surprise!” Eduardo shouts at him. Mark looks behind, but no one’s there. When he turns back, he finds Eduardo alone.

He doesn’t know if it’s courage, stupidity, curiosity, or guilt that makes him walk over. 

“Mark,” he corrects. It doesn’t sound as indignant as he would like. Only nostalgic.

Eduardo smiles, and it sends Mark back in time (Kirkland, thefacebook, the angel investment, I was your only friend), before Eduardo leans over and says, “I’m not in the mood to open that can of worms, Mike. Let’s just have a good time.”  
  
  
  


ϟ ϟ ϟ

Eduardo is surprisingly articulate for someone intoxicated, as if it’s unacceptable for him to slur even when drunk. They’re at the door of Eduardo’s suite when Mark realizes that, after listening to Eduardo ramble on about the weather in Singapore.

Now he’s quiet. Calm, composed, looking for his key card. 

It’s hard to tell that he’s drunk.

When the door shuts softly behind them though, Eduardo closes in on Mark, corners him, grabs him by the cheeks, kisses him, sighs against his mouth, fingers slipping through his hair.

He reeks of alcohol, and it’s something Mark isn’t used to.

Mark pushes against Eduardo a little, and they break apart.

Eduardo doesn’t seem too bothered by it. He only looks at Mark with dark, half-lidded eyes. “Remember the night we first met?” he whispers. 

Mark doesn’t answer. He wipes his mouth against his sleeve, eyes focused on anywhere but Eduardo. 

Eduardo scoffs at his reticence. He retreats, turns away, walks over to the mini-bar.

It’s a scary topic to tackle, the night they first met, and Mark doesn’t really feel safe. He tries to shut out the flood of memories, crosses his arms across his chest and slouches, as if that would do it, but the memories flash by relentlessly. His mouth goes dry. He closes his eyes and tries to focus on the present, the here and now.

Eduardo has other plans. “You were standing there. Just… standing there. You looked like you were judging the decorations, the people, the reasons they were there, the reasons why… you’re, why you’re so unlike them. And you wondered what made them so different from you, or what made you so different from the rest of us.” He laughs coldly, gaze down, like it’s an inside joke he has with himself. “It’s ironic how I want to be there again. Can you imagine, that the only time and place I want to be now, more than ever, is that moment when I was so naive to think: I’m going to talk to this guy, and make him want to be at this party?”

He looks straight at Mark, and it’s like looking right into the eye of a storm. 

Eduardo licks his lips, eyes Mark, and his expression grows morose. “You look so much like him, Mike.” 

Mark doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say. He can imagine the AEPi party like it was only yesterday even though he really doesn’t want to. 

“He was misanthropic, the definition of it, but he wanted so much to be a part of… something,” Eduardo says. “He’d sell his best friend just to get a fraction of a Harvard final club’s bike room.” 

It doesn’t make any sense, but it hurts anyways.

Eduardo smiles softly and lowers his head. “My bad, I said I wouldn’t talk about it.” He rubs the toe of his shoe into the carpet. He’s nervous. “I know what you’re thinking, I know what you’re going to say. That-- That I need closure with Mark. That I need to just. Forget.”

Eduardo turns his back to him and grabs bottles from the mini-fridge, and soon enough the sound of wine pouring into glass fills the room.

“You shouldn’t,” Mark says. 

“You’re not my father,” Eduardo says through his teeth, his eyes dark and hard when he turns to look at Mark again, glass in hand.

“I should hope not,” Mark replies, tired. “And you’re not seventeen.”

Eduardo laughs. He then brings the glass to his lips, to Mark’s dismay, and downs everything in one go. The thunder rumbles outside, ominous.

“Is this how you lull yourself to sleep, Mark?” The way Eduardo enunciates his name sends shivers down Mark’s spine. “Tell yourself you’re not seventeen anymore? Forget about the beginning? Forget the people who were there with you? I call bullshit. Bullshit.” He points at Mark. “No. You think of me every night. Every second of every waking hour, and you’ll wish you could go back to that AEPi party too. You’ll wonder what it’ll take, you’ll wonder if it’ll make a difference. But let me save you some time and pain: the answer is no, it wouldn’t make a fucking difference.” Eduardo’s voice breaks. “Because this is who you are, and this is who I am, and we weren’t ever meant to be.” 

The room flashes white. 

“It wasn’t ever about the money. It wasn’t about the ads, or thefacebook, or Sean, not really,” Eduardo adds. “You just can’t fix incompatibility. No one can, and that’s how it is.”

It’s lightning, Mark tells himself, not pain. Not pain.

But he feels it. 

“I’ve always believed that love diminishes every time you say I love you,” Eduardo starts again, unprompted. “That love isn’t real if you have to spell it out. That the weight of those words becomes lighter each time they have to be uttered.”

Eduardo starts pouring another glass, and Mark watches. Petrified.

The thunder growls like a cornered tiger.

“It took me a while to realize that those were just lies I fabricated to convince myself that my parents loved me. That people like you show affection in a different way. That in the end I’d have a safety net, somehow.” Eduardo approaches the floor-to-ceiling window and looks out at the rain. “Do you remember Palo Alto?” 

Mark doesn’t answer. He walks to the counter and gathers up the bottles. 

“You said, and I think your exact words were, that you needed me. That you didn’t want him to know you said that. That you needed me, Mark. You don’t know what that meant to me. You have absolutely no clue.” Eduardo looks down, brooding, his voice softer. “Why do I even need you? Why do I need you so much?” 

Mark goes into the bathroom and starts opening the bottles. 

“You know, during the depositions against the Winklevosses. I -- I stood up for you. I don’t know why - you stabbed me in the back, left me for dead, and somehow I’m the one grovelling. Like I’m the one who’s done something unforgivable. Like I'm the one who doesn’t have any dignity to even stand by it.” 

Mark pours the bottles down the sink, one by one.

“I think I’m destined to need people who don’t need me.”

When Mark finishes all the bottles, he looks up at the mirror. He sees someone who is trying hard to hide shame and guilt and this decade-old struggle behind the tired lines across his face.

“You’re not even listening, are you?”

Mark exhales and braces himself against the sink.

“You’ll never apologize, will you.”

The thunder crashes down, pierces Mark through the heart. 

There’s something there, deep inside, that he can’t see. He knows that. He just never wants to look. 

He wonders why he followed Eduardo up to his suite.

“I shouldn’t have frozen the account,” Eduardo admits, his voice much more subdued. “There were other ways to get you to look at me, just as there were other ways for you to tell me you didn’t need me.” 

Mark takes another long look at himself. He sniffles, then looks away and grabs a towel.

When he walks back into the room, Eduardo is on the floor, his back against the windowpane, his eyes closed.

Mark goes over and helps him up, pulls him to the bed. Eduardo doesn’t struggle, completely surrenders himself, like he thinks he’s not worth fighting for. Mark rolls him onto his side, uses the towel to dry Eduardo’s hair, unbuttons the top of his shirt, takes off his leather shoes. He puts a pillow behind Eduardo’s back and takes a step back. Then another. 

He goes back to the mini-bar and grabs a glass, cracks a bottle of water open and pours. 

His fingers are shaking, but he holds on.

When he gets back to the bed, he realizes that the thunderstorm outside is purring somewhere far away, and that Eduardo has fallen asleep.

He places the water on the nightstand, sits down at the foot of the bed, and looks out the window.  
  
  
  
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, finally.  
  
And though he contemplates leaving, he stays.

**Author's Note:**

> Fluff next time. I'll try harder.
> 
> Let me know your thoughts? I will cherish them! Thank you for reading!


End file.
